I’m going to make a few observations, first about some of the previous comments, and second, about some of the downgrades. First, S-zation and highflyer74 are correct, we have to work together to make OSM a success. Second, many of the roads that you downgraded easily meet the definition given on the Trunk_road page, so why the downgrade?

Hi Daniel,

This is a great idea, and should help improve routing greatly. However, I would like to ask that you specifically include a mention to check Mapillary and OpenStreetCam imagery before making changes. I just reverted some changesets that someone made while using your instructions, because unfortunately, the editor relied on outdated satellite imagery, and so converted the new diverging diamond interchange into the old straight-road version.

–jack

Hi, all! Thanks for the comments so far!

@maxerickson - I’m aware of the imagery layers in both JOSM and iD for the USFS roads, and I do use those frequently to find roads that haven’t been mapped (which seem to be few in my area). But your other approach sounds interesting, so I might need to set aside some time one weekend to try it out and see how it works for me.

@Robert - By “resource extraction” I assume you mean logging, mining, etc. I haven’t come across much of that in my wanderings through the woods. Mostly what I see are roads that run along/near creeks, with a lot of good spots for fishing, and various campsites along the road. Some of these roads are 5 or 10 miles long (or longer!), and are usually as wide in most places as a typical rural county-maintained gravel or dirt road. Those, I’m usually marking as “unclassified” because they’re “big” roads. Then there are the smaller, usually but not always sized to be about 1 lane, that have various points of interest along or at the end, and are generally usable by passenger cards (not counting recent storm damage or other activity). Those get the “service” designation. Then there are the rarely-maintained 1-lane ones that might or might not have something interesting along them, and typically need something beefier than a normal family sedan. They usually (but not always) get set as “track.”

@Alan - Yes, I understand :-) I’m trying to use “service” in the spirit of how it is described in the wiki.

Just to provide a couple of examples: FS 33 “Cooper Creek Road” in north Georgia I’ve tagged as highway=unclassified because it’s a wide, somewhat well-traveled road that has a lot of activity for such a remote area. Lots of fishing along the creek, lots of single campsites. The same for FS 42 “Blue Ridge Road” (that I’m still working on. It’s a very long, through-road that has a lot of activity along it, and is in reasonable condition. The same cannot be said for FS 665 “Tickanetley Road” that branches off of FS 42. You might make it in a passenger car, but be sure to have snacks and water on hand in case you have to hike back to where you can get a cell signal to call for help. There are, however, some interesting things along it that someone with 4WD can access, including some pretty isolated camp sites. Several hiking trails criss-cross through the entire area, including the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. FS 816 I marked as “service” because, while it’s a couple of miles long, it isn’t a through-road, and at the end you can park and hike a short distance to the Toccoa River and the swinging bridge over the river. Nice scenery for lunch, and just a nice bridge to see.

SK53 (and others): Here’s a sample set of photos from a Tractor Supply store to give a feel for what they look like inside. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9fHTht9NVB8S3BfdVVvNzl6Y0k I just took some general shots to cover the sections. You can see some merchandise, but not all.

While I was there I also reread your shop=country_store wiki page, and I guess it does fit in with that type of category. But I’ll take your feedback from the pics.

SK53: The next time I’m in a TSC, I’ll take some pictures of the inside for you to look at. I’ll note that the exterior photo from your wiki article looks almost identical to TSC.

Math1985: The pictures from that link remind me more of what I would tag as shop=hardware. TSC has more animal-related products than anything else, and usually very little in the way of building supplies or tools.

SK53, you might be on to something. The wiki entry does seem to cover what TSC sells, and it does cover pets, too. I’ll spend a little time contemplating that tag because I don’t want to rush into a bunch of changes, but….it sounds like you’re right. Thanks for the pointer to that one!

Hi Max. I would prefer to just use one type of contact scheme myself, but since I don’t know how data consumers are processing the fields (e.g., do they all know how to use one or the other, some use one, some the other, etc.), I’ve decided to keep using both for now. I have a preference for the contact: method because it groups those tags together, much like addr: does for address data. This sounds like a good topic to bring up on the tagging mailing list, though.

With respect to the shop= tag, at first I was just doing farm_supply, but they have a large enough pet section that I thought it was worth including that, too. In contrast, while they also sell clothing, that area is just too small, in my opinion, to include as an additional tag. I put pet on the shop tag because they sell pet supplies, whereas my understanding from various pages on the wiki is that pet=yes simply means pets are allowed.

Alan: While it has been my observation that the stores all appear to have the same hours of operation, it wouldn’t be a big loss if that couldn’t be auto-filled. Of course the phone number, ref, and a few other store-specific things couldn’t be done, and that’s expected. I would think that website could be, though, if we wanted to use the company’s top-level webpage (but again, no loss if it couldn’t be done).

Simon: Thank you for that info! I had no idea that there might actually be a process for doing that.

Math1985: Thanks for the pointer! I was not aware of that project.